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Isn't this considered insider trading? You'd think there should be a blackout period around any kind of layoff, similar to how they do with earnings.
He traded on publicly available information, didn't he? Like, literally, what's the difference between him or you logging into a trading platform and issuing a sell on Tuesday morning?
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> But this means that we're ignoring the harm that was done to the people that lost their income and the disruptions that the rest of the org will experience. As opposed to the 'benefit' that was done while they were granted income? I'm unsure what your point is. Is a business never supposed to 'harm' its employees? They're never allowed to fire people? What is the logical conclusion of your statement? A business oug…
It should actually be very very expensive for a company to fire people. Why do stock markets have an automated forced "PAUSE" when stocks seem like they are crashing? It's because companies, investors, people, or even computers don't always act rationally. That pause has prevented a lot of hiccups from turning into full-blown crashes. Right now, when a company lays people off, the town, state, and federal government…
If the existing unemployment _insurance_ (forced payroll contributions to each State) are not sufficient, then change that insurance system.
There could be a business opportunity for supplemental market-priced contributions which pay on job loss. That wouldn't be worse than the 'legal assist' ripoff plans HR pimps at employee hiring.
Spotify is a for-profit enterprise and if laying people off is the right financial choice then he's doing his job well. He can sell his shares when he feels like it.
> He can sell his shares when he feels like it. I thought that as a corporate officer he kind of can't sell his shares when he feels like it? My layperson's understanding is that people like him have to decide in advance when they're going to sell shares and tell the SEC (by filing a 10b5-1 with a preset sales schedule and cooling-off period before sales start). I thought that the most control he would get is choosin…
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This is a fair assumption, but incomplete. Its the C-suite management that makes all the decisions and reaps all the rewards, but when they make mistakes, they don't fire themselves, they fire employees, many who had no control of the strategic mis-steps of their leadership. Sometimes the C-suite needs to be fired.
I'm not sure Spotify has really made any mistakes here though. They took a risk that didn't pan out. For an omnipotent being that would be a mistake, but for a person that only has the information available at the time it can still have been the right bet. Firing people when their bets don't pan out just leads to a risk averse culture that dooms any company to failure
The important thing to evaluating someone's decision making ability is to look at the decision they made with the information they had. Was it a good bet to dramatically overhire? I don't know!, but analysts can and should (rather, have no excuse not to). It's possible to determine what information the C-suite had access to and how risky they believed the decision to be. Did they play fast and loose with peoples' livelihoods for a tiny chance of unsustainable profit? Might be a bad decision.
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All business is profiting off misfortune of other people. That is the cornerstore of post-industrial capitalism: maximize the externalization of the costs of production. Name one product, service or industry which does not harm people, animals or the environment - impossible!
No it’s not. This is nihilism. Growing food and bringing it to you is one example of millions. And no it doesn’t “harm the environment” to dig a potato out of the ground every year or whatever.
This is not nihilism. This is what capitalism is by definition. Says Rob Urie:
> Economic production that produces toxic externalities like global warming, dead oceans, undrinkable water, unbreathable air, etc, depends on assigning little or no value to these. To make this very clear, Western economic ‘accounting’ places no value on these, on the most fundamental necessities of living beings, by design. As Oscar Wilde put it, a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. This is in fact a summation of Western economics; circumscription of the ‘knowable’ world by what has had a price tag put on it. The externalized costs of capitalist production are real— more real than the stuff in stores that is only ‘cheap’ because the true costs were lobbed off on people who haven’t yet fought back.
- https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/09/global-warming-is-ec...
It’s kind of weird to see people want to work at big corporations but then act surprised or salty about layoffs. It’s nothing personal. You’re a line number even if you’re some leet coder. It’s a business, and it’s a strategy game of utilizing resources. You might have 400k TC but you’re not god you’re a resource. If you think these things aren’t fair or suck, then you should try to move out of the leet coder path an…
> If you think these things aren’t fair or suck, then you should try to move out of the leet coder path and get on the capital owner or business operator side. You could also try to improve society. People don’t have to just take it, they can fight back. All power comes from the consent of the masses, none of these guys have the physical power to compel any of us to do anything at all, including let them live. Look w…
Go start a business with your friends who think same way. See if you can build a business that can take care of its employees and do something good.
You could change your own life and that of your colleagues.
Never go public, and you don’t have any pressure to grow at all costs. Don’t take on debt.
Oh right. It’s literally a week of effort to do some LC and get a 400k job lol.
Compared to a monumentally larger effort to start and sustain a business, which may or may not even make it a year.
It’s kind of weird to see people want to work at big corporations but then act surprised or salty about layoffs. It’s nothing personal. You’re a line number even if you’re some leet coder. It’s a business, and it’s a strategy game of utilizing resources. You might have 400k TC but you’re not god you’re a resource. If you think these things aren’t fair or suck, then you should try to move out of the leet coder path an…
"If you think these things aren’t fair or suck, then you should try to move out of the leet coder path and get on the capital owner or business operator side." Some people like engineering and don't want to have to do an entirely different career. I would love to be treated as a human as an engineer (which is why I'm trying to leave the big companies but it's hard to find a company much better)
There are positions where you can just stay put engineering all day but entails being an irreplaceable resource to your employer - so only few generally can get to this niche.
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I used to have this attitude in my early 30s when I first made >500k. I thought I was indestructable, irreplacable and had an ego to match it. What a humbling experience it was to be laid off, in fact I think it was one of the best things to have happened to me. My relationship to work and business is much healthier now. I just smile at the silly games tech employers and their staff play.
What’s your TC now?